Family contact key to inmates

OLYMPIA – For much of Dalana Smith’s young life, spending just a few hours with her mom meant two nights sleeping on church floors, 12 hours riding in a van and a trip through security checkpoints.

Her mother was in prison.

A few times a year, under the “Girl Scouts Beyond Bars” program, Smith would make the long trip from Tacoma to see her mom at Medical Lake’s Pine Lodge Corrections Center for Women. There, for a few hours, they would talk, bowl with plastic bowling pins, jump rope and blow bubbles outside, and make scrapbooks to remember each other by.

“It meant a lot,” said Smith, 12, whose mother was released last year and now lives in Spokane. “Without a mom, what is there?”

Nationwide, prison officials say, there are more than a million kids whose parents are behind bars. Average age: 8.

With ever-increasing prison costs, state lawmakers are trying to reduce recidivism among inmates. One way to do that, they say, is to encourage support from family and friends. Late last year, after years of pleading by families, the state Department of Corrections sharply reduced long-distance phone costs.

The department has launched father/child visits, gift exchanges and read-to-your-child recording programs at prisons.

Now, lawmakers want to boost and expand efforts to strengthen bonds between inmates and their families. To help pay for it, they propose spending $1.2 million over the next two years.

House Bill 1422, prime-sponsored by Rep. Mary Helen Roberts, D-Edmonds, would order state agencies to develop policies and programs to encourage family contact. The larger goals are promoting normal child development, reducing repeat crimes and preventing the children from also landing in prison.

The only local co-sponsor is Rep. Timm Ormsby, D-Spokane.

Life is hard for inmates’ children, advocates told a House committee Tuesday. Losing a parent to prison often leaves them poorer. They may feel ashamed and alienated from friends. They tend to bounce from one caregiver to the next. And they’re at much higher risk, studies suggest, of ending up behind bars themselves.

“Children suffer a silent sentence,” said Kathy Russell, head of the social work program at Pacific Lutheran University.

“This is an issue we absolutely have to tackle or we’re going to continue to build prisons and underfund schools,” said Sharon Darcy, co-founder of Oregon’s Children’s Justice Alliance, which tries to encourage those family ties.

Nationwide, legislative researchers say, more than half of imprisoned parents say they have never had an in-person visit from their children. More than 60 percent are incarcerated more than 100 miles from home.

The Girl Scouts’ “Beyond Bars” program is partly funded by the state Department of Corrections. Since 1999, 252 girls with a mother in prison have joined the program, which is a blend of traditional Scouting and trips to visit their mothers at three correctional facilities around the state. Prison officials approve mothers for the program.

More than 70 girls are in the program this year, according to Gloria Morehouse, a leader with the group’s Pacific Peaks Council.

“They get to see other kids who are in the same circumstances, so there’s nothing to hide,” said Morehouse. “It’s important for them to have that feeling of belonging.”